Survivor Guilt
by CeshireCapricorn
Summary: 30 seconds to mars / Jules Muflier does whatever she wants, because she knows well how much too short life is to do anything else than fulfilling your own wishes ... not even the man with those damn confusing blue eyes will change that.


_Why the hell did I give in?_, I ask myself for the hundredth time and enter the building.

Since I've been back from Iraq my family hasn't given me one second of peace. Well, okay, my military service was ended »to the cause of psychic labiality« but that doesn't mean I'm on a death sentence. Every time I enter a room, everybody falls to silence and watches me in a creepy way so no wonder I've cut myself off a little.

But recently my mother had the idea a job could get me down to earth again and it would help me, if I had some daily routines. Since then I've been captured between phonecalls, what I'm thinking about this or that job and if I would be interested to work here or there.

Even just remembering this, I get annoyed again and stomp now more powerful than needed through the long halls of the building, without even noticing the other people staring.

Anyway, Aunt Ally came up with the preposition of me working at her job and she got so caught up in this idea, that I had to give in, finally.

_I won't behave properly as always so they will fire me and I am gonna be able to live at peace with all this job-crap_, I think and smile grimly.

For a week now I've come here every day but it seems like no one is willing to give me real work, like they were planning to pay me for my (only physical) presence. Hey, a little bit extra money plus the payment from the army – why not?

»O, Jules, great, you're here«, smiles my aunt a bit over the top, and approaches with a frighteningly big grin. My name is French (God knows what my parents were thinking, when they gave me that name), it's being awfully pronounced, sounds like »Schül« and I hate it with all my heart.

Silently I nod to her and put my hands in my pockets.

Aunt Ally scans me critically from top to bottom, purses her lips, but holds in the unfriendly words lying there somewhat obvious on her tongue.

I'm wearing my army-trousers and black boots, pretty conventional in my opinion. The black wrist-warmers, which cover up my wrists and a bit of my arm, are in opposition to the dark blue top, which is a few sizes bigger than I need and sometimes even showing my bra. A black leatherjacket presents the rest of my outfit, but seems to please Aunt Ally in no way.

_At least I went today out of my house with the consciousness of making some people mad about it. I would rather be as crazy as I am, than as stiff as you are …_

»Would you please check the interview-room for me? You know, later nothing should go wrong when those guys come, and we want … «

Blablablablabla is everything that makes it to my brain from this point on and I just keep nodding as if I'd understand what she's talking about. As if it would bother me at all.

» … then everything's said. Go, Jules!«

I turn around and walk lamely out of the room, far away from this energized woman, but as I get to the hall, I don't know where to turn to. Where actually is the room, where those interviews take place? Is that what they are doing here? Did they do that the whole time I have been here? Why didn't I realize this? O, right, because I don't give a damn.

Fine, said room has been checked already a thousand times, this order is again one of those, that actually really are none.

I randomly choose one direction and just floatingly walk through doors and halls, thinking about how I wish I had my boxes here or at least my headphones, so I could listen to my music. Sighing, I play with the iPod in my pocket, but without my headphones, it is almost useless. Even if I –

O, hey, there's a board on which is written »studio«. Found it. Yay, me.

I push the door open and find myself in a darkened room. When my eyes have gotten used to the dimmed light in here, I'm looking at a big window and through its glass I can see another room, bigger than the one I'm standing in. In that room is a dark leathersofa and some lights around it, directly positioned to the sofa. Three or four cameras are in position, too – on that sofa one must feel like in front of a pistol.

In the smaller room, which I'm standing in, the whole space under the big window is covered with buttons, cables, and more tech-crap. Two of those bureauchairs, on which one as a child always has been floating up and down, are standing before this ocean of modern tech, and I instantly ask myself, who the needed brain-capacity holds to remember which button has which effect.

Or even, who would want to waste his brain-capacity on something like that.

A small door next to the tech-crap leads to the sofa-room and I think about whether I want to go in there or not.

Aunt Ally said I had to do it. On the other hand I'm never doing what I've been told to. I do whatever I want to and in this case it could be coincidently be the same as I've been told to do. Happens sometimes. Or not.

Then I see, that there are small signs in between the wires and buttons, which read »synthesizer« and stuff.

Maybe those tech-people don't have such a good memory after all.

And there, next to a big red button (it's almost literally screaming: »push me! Push me and the world will end!«), is a little wire, that seem familiar.

I take my iPod out of my jeanspocket and try, if it matches with the wire. Does Perfectly. When I push ›play‹, a dark vibrating bass fills the room next door, and I know, that the volume there is as high as it gets.

_Let's see, if the couch vibrates, too, like my boxes do._

The beat hums through my whole body as I enter the room and even that feeling, like my teeth are about to drop right out of my mouth, cannot make me stop smiling. I close the door behind me and am almost hopping through the room until I finally get to the couch.

It sounds like »whump« when I fall on it and then I fidget as long around, as it takes, to find a comforting position. In the end my legs lie higher than the rest of my body, and my head just falls off the edge and stays in the opposite way, it's supposed to.

_Jup, I like it like this._

Everything is the wrong way around, but I think, it is now maybe even better. Don't know why, it's just a feeling, but I do or even think whatever my feelings tell me to.

The cameras, which all point at me, do really feel like being target-locked by a good distanceshooter. These cameras glisten in the same black color, silent, dangerous and without any emotion.

If you close your eyes whilst the blood floods in the non-natural direction (like into the head instead of the legs), everything is moving and circling around you. Like being drunk, just without that heavy feeling in your head.

Behind my closed eye-lids the world moves faster and slower, before it speeds up again.

I giggle silently, maybe even the first sound I did today.

»I'm so happy / because today I found my friends / they're in my head«, sings Kurt Cobain and makes the room and my heart swing.

_O yeah, he's absolutely right. The dead are still in my head. The friends, that are not false-friends or just acting, those friends only exist in my fantasy, real friendship is a lie, which romantics and high philosophers made up, to see the world a little less dark …_

»I'm so ugly / but that's okay / because so are you … «

I open my eyes with irritation.

Who the hell lowered the volume to this pathetically low level?

I stay still in my position and try to look through the reflecting glass of the window, who is there fumbling at my iPod. The silhouette behind the glass moves and then the door opens.

It is a man, a few years older than me, although I have to admit that he's still pretty cut. He has stunning blue eyes, which remind me immediately of – nope, I push those thoughts as far away as possible, in order to stay in reality. The eyes are surrounded by proximate long lashes, maybe a little too womanly for my taste. Plus he's squinting just a tiny bit, which makes me feel like saying »aaawww«, that normal women maybe feel when they see Babies or rabbits or something ›cute‹ like that. I find myself not liking this feeling.

The man has brown hair, which stands so straight from his head, that I automatically ask myself, if he's an artist or so, as lost and sleepy as he looks with this hair and the stubbles across his cheeks.

His outfit matches this not, because he's wearing normal dark trousers and a dark leatherjacket, most similar to mine, but with more rivets. The equally dark shirt is printed with some purple motive. Somewhere between chic and grunge it is and I can't just yet decide, which side it is more. But I'm fully aware of the fact, that this man seems to be as much thinking-about-what-other-people-think, as seemingly every fucking person on this fucking planet.

»What 're you doing?«, I ask somewhat angrily and ignore his eyes, that wander slowly over my whole body – or maybe just my untypical position – until they get to my face, where they watch me bewildered. »I want to listen to that.«

The stranger drops his head to one side as if he was trying to imitate my position and shuts his eyes almost all the way. Besides that: no reaction.

»Hey man, don't just stand there and look stupid. Turn ›Lithium‹ up again, that song is absolutely great.«

Now the man takes a few steps towards me, and in this moment the in my head flooding blood gets almost painful.

»If you don't like it, leave and turn it up before you go. No one forces you to listen«, I snap, because he's still not showing any reaction.

»Say something«, I demand and watch him some more seconds. Then I sigh annoyed and get into a moderate position again, straight up.

The unknown man blinks and the look in his eyes is so puzzled, that I'd have laughed, if I wouldn't be so annoyed. Now the last notes of the song fill the room, and then Nirvana falls silent again.

»You … sorry, but … what … ?«, the guy asks, still somewhat dazzled.

»What? Can't you talk to people, as long as they're not in the position, you wish them to be?«, I say coldly and watch him again from the toes to his hair. »Mhm, not so bad, after all. But not my type … doesn't matter, you have to be enough.«

With these words I take the wrist of the stranger and pull him next to me on the couch. As soon as he sits I put my legs in his lap and lean against his shoulder. _Right, now I could sleep._

»What 're you doing?«, the stranger asks skeptically and seems to have finally found his voice again.

_Pity, just now I began to like his silence …_

»Hm«, I sigh and close my eyes halfway. »I'm tired and needed something to lean on.«

»And you're using instead of the couch … ?«

»You. Obviously.« I revise my position against him a little and find, he has surprisingly muscular upper arm, for how lanky he looks. »Apropos, what's your name anyway?«

Now he chuckles quietly and leans back so I sink backwards with him, and find myself in a half lying position. Quite comfortably, too.

»I should have known it«, he mumbles but when I ask what he means, I don't get an answer.

I flinch back and look him straight in the eyes, recognize he may be a whole lot bigger than me, because even sitting I have to look up to him. Okay, wow, these eyes are really extremely blue. But still he seem a little bit womanly – well, more womanly than the men I'm used to. Even his astonishing appeal doesn't have any effect on me, he's like a beautiful picture. You can't stop looking, but for a masterpiece the fascination is missing.

»I should probably better ask, who you are«, he counters and he puckers up his lips into a smirk.

What is there to laugh about?

»Jules Muflier«, I introduce myself. »And which name bears ignorance itself?«

Again he chuckles and yet I insulted him. Well, maybe I shouldn't always think I am the craziest person in the room.

Still my calves rest over his thighs and slowly I can feel his warmth pervade through the textile. My arms are crossed over my chest, but when he glances at my neckline I know my top is out of place and he can see my bra.

»By the way, my eyes are here«, I say coldly and don't even think about adjusting my top.

»Jared Leto«, he smirks cheeky in my face and lies his arm on the backrest next to me.

I really hope my english is good enough ... ^^


End file.
